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Report for "Making Apps" workshop in KMD, Japan
Teaching Assistant for "Making Apps" workshop in KMD, hiyoshi, Japan Purpose: Teaching Assistant for Prof Cheok Location: Keio Graduate School of Media Design, Japan Website: http://www.kmd.keio.ac.jp/en/ Dates: 11/07/2011-19/07/2011 This one-day workshop was conducted by Prof Cheok, the main purpose of this workshop is to give a overall introduction of the mobile Apps to the KMD students, and basic knowledge about how to start the App development. Apps on mobile phones and Tablets are so hot nowadays that more and more developers, designers are joining in. It is a very promising area not only for business, but also for students as well. It is important for them to know more about the big vision, and the new strategies of how to make a successful App. The title of the workshop is "Apps are Hot! Techniques and New Strategies of Making Apps on Mobile Devices ". It was conducted on July 17th, Sunday in KMD class room, from 11am to 5pm. The schedule is as follows: 11-12 am: Lecture 12-12:30: iOS SDK Tutorial 12:30-1:00: Lunch break 1:00-1:10 Confucius App demo 1:10-1:20 Briefing the hands-on session 1:20-1:50 Group discussion (Finalize the keywords and the general idea) 1:50-4:30 Mock Up the App 4:30-5:00 Presentation 5:00-5:15 Wrap up First, Prof Cheok gave a exciting lecture to the students, conphrehensively introduced the relevant topics around the App industry. From the introduction of what is App, to why App is so hot, different platforms for mobile Apps, etc. After that, Prof talked about the new trends for apps and how to make a successful app in this hot area. To make your app stand out from millions of app, the app needs to be fun, simple, unique and effective. Generating a good idea is very critical for the success of app development. Remember to be creative, find a specific problem and develop an app to solve that problem. One important element is the social and contextual function, which means to provide the exact service at the exact situation. And also it is very important to combine the new functions of smart phone together with the powerful computing, for example, the widespread of LBS(location-based services). In the end, Prof also introduced the apps that developed by us students. One is the Confucius App from our lab, the other is ELP(Energy Literacy Platform) done by previous KMD students. Through these two examples, Prof highlighted the possibilty for us students to join in the App hot area, which stimulated the passion of the KMD students a lot to have a try themselves. After the lecture, I gave them a short tutorial on the iOS SDK programming, introduced about the basic functions of the SDK, and then showedthem step by step of how to generate a "Hello World" App using this package. Since most of them are from the design background, without too much knowledge about programming, it is necessary to tell them the general functions and procedures of App development, so that they can get familiar with this, and help them to start. Besides the programming, I also introduced to them various tools to build the mock-up for App, so they can choose which one they prefer to use to mock up their App during the hands-on session in the afternoon. Surpringsly, some are very interested to try the programming later, so I recommended one book for them, which can help them to learn about this later. After lunch, they began the brainstorming of app generation. One group had two or three members, and discussed about different ideas. Whenever they had a idea, they explained to us all, and moved on to the mock-up process. Each group had a fantastic idea, ranging from interesting games, to social relationship from cooking, and also one idea from the popular app bijin-tokei in Japan ( http://www.bijint.com/en/ ), by extending this to pet. They were very exciting and concentrating on their app, and finished at 4:30. Then, each group presented their App with the idea, the mock up, and the story behind. This group's app is called" Love Love Ramen", very nice name! They want to match people by letting them cooking ramen together. The style that people cook ramen can indicate whether they are matchable with each other. If they match, they can meet and have ramen together. Very interesting idea~ And they use different tools for the mock-up process. One group use the pensil-like sketch tool, one use the PhotoShop, and one use the SDK programming, and they actually finished the app, and run it in the Simulator!!! It was an exciting workshop, and I was impressed by their creativity and passion to finish this in just 2 hours. After the workshop, they actually mentioned to me that they want to finish their product later, to make their real app. I hope this workshop can help them to have a good start. As Prof said, this workshop is a begining, not an end for their app development. Besides the workshop, I also attended the master presentations of the KMD students on Saturday, July 16th, and their plenary meeting on Monday, July 18th. Here are some of the presentations： fPhoto: Designing Mobile Fashion Service to experience a window-shopping Novel Collage-Stories:Offers a novel way for people, especially for family to record their everyday life Innovation in Management of Art: Selling artwork in context Media Furniture: Furniture as a way for music expression